Art and commentary by Kimberly Harris

Mummy really loved her morning coffee. Her favorite brand was Premium Bat Blend No.2 Arabica from Anubis Coffee and Tea Estates. She always used two scoops per cup and it was strong enough to raise the dead.

Nosferatu was a lonely single man who felt he needed to fill a void in his life. Bela was an abandoned bloodhound-mix whose owner just happened to have been a recent victim of a mysterious case of exsanguination. They found each other at a local Transylvanian animal shelter and were a perfect match.

Most of Joe’s adult life was spent working as a carny in charge of the whirling teacups. After he passed, in accordance with his last wishes, he was laid to rest in a sarcophagus of his own choosing in a now abandoned amusement park.

This illustration is from Day 23 of my contributions to Mabs Drawlloween Daily Art Challenge on Instagram. The prompt was “Coffin.”

The Bigfoot Family of sasquatches is taking a Sunday drive in their classic 1953 Ford Crestline Sunliner convertible to reminisce about the carefree days before instant communications and social media spawned a generation of pesky cryptozoology zealots.

Contrary to some scientific theories based on data extrapolated from known species of large primates, Sasquatches actually live extraordinarily long lives. Papa Bigfoot can remember way back to the times that predate mechanized transportation when the only humans he encountered in the wilderness were on foot or on horseback. But one day, the tranquility of the woods was shattered when a noisy chattering Ford Model T Ford emerged from the trees belching noxious fumes as it worked its way up a hill. These invasions of their once tranquil domain persisted and grew more frequent. Then, in the 1960s, a flood of cheap pulp magazines featuring sensational accounts of frightening human interactions with Sasquatches hit the newsstands and launched an era of annoying Bigfoot enthusiasts, researchers and hunters.

The Bigfoot family made the difficult decision to move deeper into the forest to avoid contact with these ghastly mechanical abominations and their loathsome occupants that were now appearing throughout the country. For this reason, Sasquatches are not seen as frequently today as in the past when humans and Sasquatches routinely interacted with Native Americans and traded firewood for food. It is said that some tribes even learned to communicate with Sasquatches using their own language which is characterized by crude vocalizations consisting of whistles, grunts and birdlike chirps.

Or so they say…

The truth is that Sasquatches have learned English and other human languages and can carry on a perfectly credible telephone conversation without arousing any suspicions on the part of the person they are communicating with. The Bigfoot Family routinely orders takeout from a local Chinese restaurant which they pay for with money filched from sleeping hikers’ backpacks. When a delivery is imminent, they leave it on a picnic table for the delivery person to find before retreating into the woods.

Sasquatches are known to have supernatural abilities that allow them to escape detection. They can use hypnosis and low-frequency infrasound to induce short-term memory loss in people who have seen them. Junior Bigfoot once used telepathic suggestion to get free extra cheese on a pizza that the family had delivered to a park on the outskirts of town. Earlier on, before he started his family, Papa Bigfoot opened up a trans-dimensional portal into Dearborn, Michigan and drove a brand new 1953 Ford Crestline Sunliner convertible right off a dealer’s showroom back into the portal while the salesman was in the office struggling to close a sale on it with a reluctant customer. Junior has christened the car “The Fortean Falcon” and enjoys the family excursions in the mountains with their two terriers, Meldrum and Heuvelmans. They use their capability of becoming invisible to avoid creating a distraction for other drivers on the road.

Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle

N.B. The author has never seen a Sasquatch, but he has actually gone for a ride in a real-life restored Ford Model T. During the years he lived in Mexico he drove a 1956 Buick Special convertible not unlike the Bigfoots’ 1953 Ford.